A few years ago, I was interviewing for a job as an instructional designer with a small private university in the mid-Atlantic region. This school had a good number of online courses in place, no small accomplishment for an academic technology department of one person. One of the interview questions to me was “What would you do if we told you we had to have an online course up and running in two weeks with a new instructor who has never taught online before?” Run screaming in the other direction was my inner monologue. Truth be told, I’d been in situations where even an 10 to 12 week development cycle was really tight considering all the media assets that had to be scheduled, developed, and produced along with all of the assessments reconfigured for an online environment. This is on top of all of the training that needs to happen upfront for faculty who are teaching online for the first time. I’m one for giving everyone involved ample time to prepare. But adequate prep time, along with sufficient support staff, and reasonable timelines seems to be a thing of the past (say at least a decade or so) for most in higher ed.
So why do I suddenly find myself thinking that a one week timeline for developing a new course is actually a good thing? Well, a lot has changed since I had that interview two years ago. To be sure, things move even more quickly than they did just 24 months ago but that’s not a reason near the top of my list. Developing something in a live environment, where you can see how students are receiving content, assess how well an approach resonates, tweak and rearrange in real time, and focus time and attention for a solid week can result in a better product.